The Nigerian
If Nigeria is Hell, Nigerians are the demons that populate it.
It is a fact of the matter that Nigeria is not a good place to live. The only people that disagree are foreigners (Nigerians is Diaspora included) who romanticize the idea of Africa but have never lived a day in the country as its citizen.
The others are Nigerians whose experience of Nigeria is limited to their Lekki duplexes and Owambes. Who have never truly and perhaps can never truly grasp what it actually means to be a “typical Nigerian.”
You can almost smell their privilege in every sentence they utter. The disdain is clear in their eyes as they see the common Nigerian as a lazy man who was unable to fix his life.
“Poverty is a mindset!” They proclaim with pompously in their motivational books and lectures, convinced it was their “mindset” and not daddy’s money, education and connections that got them where they are.
But my beef today is not with the Nigerian upper middle class, it is with the common Nigerian. Whose hypocrisy, ignorance and close-mindedness will be the eventual end of us all.
As Nigeria is not a good place, the average adult Nigerian is not a good person. She/he is a product of a lifelong indoctrination by parents, teachers, experiences that you have to treat this world with as much cruelty as possible to survive.
The Nigerian man is a man that needs to have a little bit of crase in him in order to survive this terrible country. You must be willing to do the despicable, think the despicable, be as selfish as possible, reject all forms of weakness, show anger and strength a;; the time unless people won’t take you seriously.
“Why you dey too gentle, you be man now” is something every proper Nigerian male has heard once in his life. That’s right politeness, kindness, are not virtues here, they are weaknesses.
You see a hungry man, offer him a job as your driver, buy food for him outside his salary, regularly shower him with gifts and kindness and he will steal from you. Take a young girl under your wings and make her your salesgirl, treat her like your daughter, but I assure you, your books won’t still balance.
It is why I often find it ridiculous when Nigerians pretend to be paradigms of morality. Talking about how our parents “discipline” made us morally superior to the oyinbos.
The only thing Nigerians understand by morality is how often you go to church/mosque, how much do you act in conformity to post-colonial hetero-normative patriarchal Nigerian “cultures.”
That’s right, to the average Nigerian, a rapist pastor is more moral than an atheist philanthropist. It’s always so ridiculous when people who don’t even adhere slightly to their own moral code are often the quickest to call upon it when it’s time to condemn the non-conformists.
“Homosexuality is a sin, and the bible is clear about it” Jide, tweets from the hotel room he and his side chick are staying in for the weekend, while his wife is still begging him for their two children’s school fees.
“How dare you say there is no God, God will judge you on judgment day and you won’t have anywhere to hide” Bisola posts on her status after diverting money from her company into her personal account.
“God’s fire and judgment will rain on all prostitutes and those that have decided to sell themselves for sex” Pastor John, a youth pastor screams from the alter looking down at the young girl he had raped two weeks prior.
I abhor the sheer audacity to presume to speak on God’s behalf, while breaking his every commands with a grin on your face, while making proclamations about how nobody is perfect.
In the words of Jesus himself “remove the log in your eyes before seeking to remove the speck in another’s eye”.
Why are we like this? Why are we so wrong? I think the answer is simple. That’s how we were raised, that’s all we know. Our parents are victims of trauma passing those trauma onto us and now we are doomed to pass them to our children.
We are essentially children of trauma who are more receptive to force than reason. We love people who abuse us, and abuse those who love us.
When we criticize the Nigerian method of parenting, we get retorts like “that’s how we were raised and we turned out fine” “When you have children of your own you will know how it feels.”
Did our parents really turn out fine though, do you still not hear the pain in their voice when they talk about how their parents treated them and how you have it better.
Look at our country, look at its citizens, does it look like anybody turned out fine? We are so close-minded, so afraid of Independent thought, unable to ever challenge the norms no matter how much it is destroying us.
The militarized upbringing that makes us adhere to some stupid culture and instructs us not to question, for to question is the greatest sin of all. That upbringing is why we have such a huge culture of unaccountability that will be our eventual doom.
The same way we could never question our parents is why we can never question our leaders. Nothing explains this better than a Yoruba proverb that loosely translates that “What do we use old age for? It is to cheat the younger ones.”
The same principle guides our leaders’ belief that “What shall we use power for? It is to oppress the less powerful”
The only way to save Nigerian from our ideological bondage is a complete reevaluation of every belief we hold dear. To question everything we were taught and do away with every belief or tradition that is not beneficial to us all.
